A
short time ago we looked at the epochal discovery of Old Testament manuscripts, recently made in
the region of the Dead Sea. We saw that these scrolls
provide remarkable corroboration of the general dependability of the text that has been passed down to
us through many generations of copyists, while promising eventually to render valuable aid toward better
understanding of many of its details.

This month we sliall give our attention to the question of the New Testament text.

Only a few years ago an article in a nationally circulated magazine told of efforts to throw new light
on the text of the New Testament, and spoke in such
a way as to raise much question about its dependability.

It is unfortunate that the mass of Christians are
little informed about the facts regarding the New
Testament text. Actually we are in a better position
to determine its correctness than we are with regard
to any ancient non-Biblical texts. Sometimes our
knowledge of a classical author is based only on one
manuscript, and that perhaps a copy made in the
twelfth century after Christ! In contrast to this, we
have hundreds of manuscripts containing all or part
of the New Testament, and many of them are from
the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries. Some are as
early as the fourth century. In the course of copying
and recopying, divergences naturally crept in, but the
great number of manuscripts that have been preserved
gives us remarkable facility for determining the correct text. Where any large number of manuscripts
differ, the variations are generally of little importance.
In no case do they affect any vital doctrine.

In the article already mentioned, one of the headlines blaringly proclaimed that there was "even doubt

about the correct text of the Lord's Prayer." In support
of this statement, it was pointed out that in some of
our early manuscripts the text of Matthew agrees with
that of Luke in omitting the words: "For thine is the
glory and the kingdom, and the power, forever,
Amen" (Matt. 6:13; cf. Lk. 11:1-4).

It is an interesting question whether Jesus said
these words in the prayer which He gave the disciples
or not. Actually, however, it makes little difference
to us. Jesus repeatedly taught that prayer does not
consist in the repetition of certain words. The Lord's
Prayer was given as a sample, not as a prescribed
formula. Whether Jesus said these particular words
in the prayer as He gave it on that occasion or not,
they contain no thought that is not clearly taught else
where in the Scripture, or that jars with the thoughts
in the rest of the prayer. The Lord's Prayer was never
intended as a magic formula, but rather as an example
of the type of ideas which God wishes us to express
in all our prayers. There is no question of the suitability of he words in this clause for use in our prayers.
To know whether Jesus spoke them on that particular
occasion would merely satisfy our curiosity; it would
add nothing to our knowledge of His Will for us.
The Bible is entirely free from error, and dependable,
and this fact is in no way affected by insertion or
omission of these words at this point. There is no
case where any sizable number of manuscripts give a
reading which would be contrary to definitely established scientific or historical knowledge.
or which
would contradict any doctrine.

When the King James version was written, humdreds of manuscripts were available, but
most of
them were fairly late. They were copies of copies of
copies, but a great deal of care had been taken in
the copying. The text was not as accurate as the text
that we can construct today, but the differences are
really comparatively slight.

Scholars have been greatly interested in trying to get our New Testament text just as exact as
possible. One of those in the, last century who was most interested in this task was the great German scholar,
Tiscliendorf, who worked in many museums, and
even walked to very distant places to visit little known
monasteries, seeking to find new manuscripts. Tischendorf's great edition of the New Testament, with
the variant readings of hundreds of manuscripts, was
our leading authority on the text of the New Testament for many years.

In 1844 Tischendorf walked to Mount Sinai, far
to the south of Palestine, to visit an old monastery
that had many ancient manuscripts. He spent a long
time hunting through its library, trying to find ancient
manuscripts of value. just as he was about to leave
the place, he happened to see a basket filled with old
parchment, ready to be taken out to be burned. He
glanced at one of the sheets in it, and noticed that it
was a page from the Old Testament, the writing of
which was easily recognizable as being very ancient
in type. Tischendorf asked to see it, and was quite
thrilled to find that it was the most ancient copy of the
Greek translation of the Old Testament that he had
ever seen. He was able to take a few pages with him,
but was compelled to leave the rest there. These few
pages he deposited in the Royal Library in Leipzig.
Tischendorf's report aroused much interest in Europe.

Eventually the interest of the Czar of Russia was
aroused. As a great leader in the Greek Orthodox
Church, the Czar would have much influence with the
monks at Sinai. He sent them valuable presents, with
a request that they should turn over this manuscript
to Tischendorf for the library in St. Petersburg.

Tischendorf went to the monastery again in 1859. He
had great difficulty in finding what he wanted, but
eventually a man came to his room and showed him
a manuscript which proved to have the entire Old
Testament, and about two-thirds of the New Testament in it. He brought it back to Europe with him,
and had it photostated and distributed. It proved to
be the most ancient manuscript of the New Testament
as yet accessible to scholars. It is now called the
Sinaiticus Manuscript. Recently the Communists sold
it for a half million dollars, and it is now in the British Museum in London.

There was only one manuscript known which was
possibly older than this one. That was the so-called
Manuscript Vaticamis, which has, reposed in the Vatican Library for at least 300 years. Many scholars
tried to get permission to study it, but found this
very difficult. Once the noted English Biblical scholar,
S. P. Tregelles, went to the Vatican with letters from
the leading Roman Catholics in England, asking that
he be permitted to study the manuscript. He was
given permission to look at it, but not to take any
notes. The Pope's men stood beside him, and if they
saw him look with particular intentness at any page
of the manuscript, they immediately grabbed it away
froni him and turned it to another page. Although
lie spent a month in the Vatican Library, he was not
able to make any copies or to carry away much precise information about the readings of this valuable
ancient manuscript. Tischendorf also tried hard to
get access to it, with little success. It was not until
1889 that a Pope decided to make a change in the
papal attitude. He opened the Vatican Library to
scholars, and had a photostat of the Vaticanus Mannscript published. Today this and the Sinaiticus are
considered our most valuable ancient manuscripts of
the New Testament. If these two stand together,
even in opposition to almost all the other Greek manuscripts, many scholars would accept their reading as
against the others.

This is an extreme attitude, While these are the
most ancient manuscripts we have, they are still from
a time more than two centuries after the originals were
put down. We do not have earlier manuscripts because before that time most writing was on papyrus,
which does not last very long, except under extremely
unusual conditions. These manuscripts are on parchment, which is much more durable. We have a very
few manuscripts of the New Testaments from the
f ourth century, somewhat more f rorn the f ifth, and then
in later centuries a great many. Some of these may
actually rest back on earlier and better manuscripts
than either the Vaticanus or the Sinaiticus. It takes
much careful study to determine the precise text at
disputed points. However, most of these are of comparatively little importance. Hundreds of manuscripts
testify to the remarkable accuracy with which our New
Testament has been passed down to us. In the few
points where errors of some significance have occurred
in copying, we have far more evidence from which
to determine which reading was in the original, than
in the case of any other ancient document.

Within the last f ive years, a great step has been
taken in adding new material for the study of these
particular passages of the New Testament. Wendell
Phillips organized an archaeological expedition in
1949, which went into Egypt and southwestern Asia.
He secured permission from the monastery at Sinai
to copy any of the manuscripts which he and his
associates might desire. In January, 1950, he sent a
group of scholars to Mt. Sinai. The Library of Congress lent them expensive microfilm cameras. They
worked seven or eight hours every day, six days a
week, looking over the various Biblical and other
manuscripts, selecting the most important ones, and
microfilming them, page by page. Hundreds of manuscripts thus copied in microfilm are now in the Library
of Congress, and copies are available to any scholar
on payment of a small fee.

During the same year, after finishing their work
at Sinai, the scholars went to the libraries of the
Greek and Armenian Patriarchs in Jerusalem, and
copied more than fifteen hundred additional manuscripts, including about three hundred New
Testiment manuscripts, and two hundred Old Testament
manuscripts. Many of these manuscripts are of great
importance, not only for Biblical study, but also for
the history and culture of the Near East in early
medieval times.

Within the last two years further work of this type
has been done. An expedition has gone to the twenty
monasteries on the Athos Peninsula in the northeastern portion of Greece. In the libraries of these
monasteries many manuscripts have been copied, including 160 additional manuscripts of the New Testament. Further detail about these expeditions is contained in recent issues of The Biblical, Archaeologist,
published by the American Schools of Oriental Research, Drawer 93 A, Yale Station, New Haven,
Connecticut.